188 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
“The funeral island,” Sam said. “The cemetery island. It’s where them as can afford it have crypts, and them as can’t go into a common grave after twelve years. Proper field of bones, it is; like they grow death there. Doesn’t matter who you are, either; if you don’t pay you don’t stay. Twelve years and zip.” “God,” Joe said. “That’s barbaric. Why? What about the English and Americans who’re buried here? Aren’t there quite a few? Didn’t Ezra Pound die here, and…somebody else, I forget who? Do they dump the foreigners too?” “Nope. There’s a separate Protestant section that doesn’t get the heave-ho unless there’s Acqua alta—high water. Then, of course, everybody floats right on out. The reason for the twelve years is that there simply isn’t enough land on San Michele, or anywhere else in Venice, to hold the dead of all those centuries. There’s a separate Isle of Bones out past Torcello if San Michele isn’t Gothic enough for you.” “Who else is there that we’d know?” Maria said, fascinated. “Well, Wagner and Browning and Diaghilev, for starters. There’s something nice about Diaghilev, in the Orthodox Church section. For as long as anybody remembers there’s been a ballet slipper left on his grave, with flowers in it. When the old one finally rots, a new one appears. Nobody seems to know who brings them.” “What a lovely thing,” I said, the enchantment growing. “To go across the lagoon in a gondola to your grave, to have someone leave a ballet slipper on it. No wonder you hear so much about death and beauty in the same breath here.” It seemed to me that every small canal we passed was arched over with high, curved bridges. Venice seemed to